It’s already been discussed recently that the link offered by Google for Chrome Enterprise downloads only offers the latest version so that, when Google updates the software, all existing actions based on the fixlet break because the new installer’s SHA/Size no longer match what’s in the action. My question is this: What’s the best way to deal with this?
All I can come up with at the moment is to create a Web Report that looks for content with “Google Chrome” and “available” from the HCL site and only archive/email when the results change. Then, when I get an e-mail, I’ll know I need to stop and redeploy the action. The problem is that I’m only one of dozens of BES Operators here that each manage anywhere from 50 to 1500 computers. My idea above won’t fly very far with many (most?) of them.
How can we make it so that a given chrome action keeps working? Could HCL provide TWO fixlets, one that would be used to directly download the latest available file from Google (to seed the precache) and another that’s fixed to a specific version but only downloads from the cache? If they can’t (or won’t) do that, what can we do individually to make this work better?
Any ideas?
My team handles this by actually not using the HCL content, but maintaining our own custom content for patching certain apps, like Chrome and Firefox. We host the update files on a local web server where they are not impacted by vendor changes/availability. We monitor for version updates and download the update, generate the prefetch statement, tweak the relevance and we’re all set. It’s really not much work - I just updated chrome and it took about 10 minutes for both the Mac and Windows fixlets.
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HCL’s workflow could be something like this:
- Google Chrome is updated.
- HCL updates the Google Chrome “live” fixlet with full Google URL.
- HCL creates a “static” copy of “live”, using the same Relevance and modifying the Action URL to contain “MANUAL_BES_CACHING_REQUIRED” (like the Java fixlets do).
- HCL marks the previous “static” fixlet as Superseded.
Not much extra work and “static” actions keep working, allowing intermittent computers to at least get that version instead of potentially receiving a perpetual download error.
Thoughts?
Still relevant - happening right now. 
I have the 2 files so I think I will just copy the official fixlet to a custom one and change the code to use the hashes found. At least this time.
I’m thinking about working up some code to try to automate this process via API. We’ll see if I ever get around to it.